GOP pushes on 'Climategate'

A series of embarrassing e-mails stolen from a British climate research center last month has wreaked havoc in the obscure academic circles of climate science.

Now Republicans hope the “climategate” scandal will do the same to the Obama administration’s environmental agenda.

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Global warming skeptics believe that the correspondence, which shows scientists debating whether to manipulate scientific data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming, is a smoking gun that will change the dynamics of the climate debate. Activists also hope the purloined e-mails will derail Democratic climate negotiations on Capitol Hill and the upcoming international talks in Copenhagen.

“The elephant in the room is the questions raised by the e-mails which have been made public,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday. “Anyone who thinks that the e-mails are insignificant, that they don’t damage the credibility of the entire movement, is naive.”

The controversy has rallied and outraged conservative activists who believe the exchanges stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit prove that climate scientists colluded to suppress data on how humans have affected climate change.

They’re pointing to comments that show scientists using a science journal “trick” to manipulate data, vowing to keep challenging studies out of journals even if “we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is” and deriding questions from climate skeptics as “crap criticisms from the idiots.”

“This is a sea change in our culture,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staffer turned prominent climate change skeptic. “Wait until January or February; you’re going to see numbers [on belief in global warming] that have dropped through the floor.”

The scandal thus far has not gained significant traction with voters beyond the conservative base, given that a majority of Americans — and most policymakers — still believe global warming to be a scientific fact. But Republicans hope that their ongoing investigation will push the issue into the mainstream.

On Friday, a top official at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change promised to investigate claims that the scientists purposely manipulated their data.

And Republicans know that the issue will continue to energize their base as they move toward the 2010 elections. Support for curbing greenhouse gases has become toxic among conservatives, who have made opposition to cap-and-trade proposals a key tenet of their party purity test. Recent polling has also shown a dramatic drop in the number of Republicans who believe in man-made global warming.

The Fiorina campaign slammed Boxer for focusing on the legal questions surrounding the stolen information instead of the validity of the science.

“While the legal issues in this case merit a full investigation, Americans also deserve to know the truth, especially as Boxer continues to force job-killing ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation through the Senate,” Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for communications Julie Soderlund said in an e-mail.